Kotak is a former managing director of Kotak Mahindra Bank, a banking and financial services group with about $100 billion in assets. The Mumbai-based company is publicly traded and has over 2,200 branches. His family office, USK Capital, acquired a majority stake in Chicago-based granola-maker Go Raw in January 2026.
The majority of Kotak's fortune is derived from a 26% stake in Kotak Mahindra Bank. His shares in the Mumbai-based bank are held by a promoter group, which includes family members and a trust, according to a December 2025 stock exchange filing and accounting for a January 2026 stock split. The fortune is attributed to him because he's the founder and family patriarch.
The Reserve Bank of India has previously decreed that Kotak should cut his stake to 15% by March 31, 2020. He sold a 3.2% interest in May 2014, and a 2.5% interest in the first half of 2017. In January 2020, it was reported that Kotak had come to an agreement with the Reserve Bank of India, in which he would reduce his stake to 26% from 30% within six months of approval. He sold another 2.8% stake in June 2020. He stepped-down as chief executive in September 2023. Kotak Mahindra Bank is the fourth largest private bank in India with over 2,200 branches as of December 2025, according to an investor presentation.
The billionaire and his family also own about 95% of Business Standard, a daily financial newspaper. The valuation of the media property is based on the average enterprise value-to-sales and enterprise value-to-earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of three publicly traded companies: HT Media, Jagran Prakashan and DB Corp.
The value of his cash investments is based on an analysis of dividends, insider transactions, taxes and market performance.
Rohit Rao, a spokesman for Kotak Mahindra Bank in Mumbai, declined to comment on the billionaire's net worth.
Uday Kotak was born in Mumbai to a family of cotton traders and grew up in a communal home where 60 extended family members shared a single kitchen. The billionaire, who has a master's degree in business administration from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies in Mumbai, played competitive cricket in his youth and topped his class. Kotak almost died in 1979, when he got hit in the head with a ball while playing cricket. He was saved after emergency surgery.
Kotak set up Kotak Capital Management Finance in 1985 when he was 26, using 3 million rupees ($164,000) he borrowed from friends and family members who ran a cotton-trading business.
At his wedding reception the same year, Anand Mahindra, now chairman of Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd., India's largest maker of sport utility vehicles and tractors, told him he would invest in the new finance company. Its name was changed to Kotak Mahindra Finance in 1986. Kotak expanded into brokering stocks, investment banking, insurance and mutual funds and converted the finance company into a full-fledged bank in 2003.
Kotak formed a partnership with Goldman Sachs in 1995. The joint venture with Kotak Mahindra was Goldman Sachs' first, marking a break with 126 years of tradition at the time it was signed. When Goldman Sachs sought to begin independent operations in India in 2006, the billionaire's company paid $75 million to buy out the 25 percent stakes that the New York-based firm held in Kotak Mahindra's investment banking and securities businesses.
Kotak said in an interview with Bloomberg News in December 2011 that dealing with Goldman Sachs taught him things were changing quickly in India and that he had to professionalize his capital-markets business. Unlike many family-owned enterprises in India, Kotak Mahindra has avoided employing his relatives.